Who Carries the Responsibility for Health Care Carbon Reduction?

Policy-makers, doctors, organizations, and academics who are persuaded that health care decarbonization is an ethical mandate are grappling with ethical and effective implementation of measures to support this goal. Health care carbon-mitigation strategies (both proposed and potential) at individual, regional (city, state, or council), national, and international levels have already been analyzed to different degrees; however, a comparative analysis of strategies at each of these levels that takes into account bioethical issues such as autonomy, responsibility, and shared decision-making has not previously been conducted (though some analysis between national and international efforts has occurred). This essay offers a comparative analysis of the ethical aspects of health care carbon reduction across these levels, including considerations of responsibility and of the potential for efforts at each level to actually impact climate change.